Swedish police becoming a laughing-stock

In an internal circular letter issued last autumn by their press office police in Stockholm were banned from passing on details to the press regarding the origin or skin colour of offenders or suspects. Columnist Quim Monzó mocks the measure in the daily paper La Vanguardia: "No doubt soon they will start withholding information about whether the offender was thin or fat because if the latter is the case the Association of Overweight Individuals might issue a letter of protest. They'd also better hush up whether the attacker was over sixty, or else some old folks' home or another will get up in arms. And in cases of sexual aggression they won't state the attacker's gender so as not to be sexist. Newsreaders will report that in some place (the name of which they prefer not to mention) a person (whose physical characteristics they also prefer not to mention) has just committed a crime the details of which they choose to withhold. And that will be followed by a call on anyone with information that could lead to the criminal's arrest to get in touch with the police and then not say anything at all."